One way to persuade me to vote Ukip

The audience at the opening night performance of 'Little Catherine' at the Phoenix Theatre (Photo: Sasha/Getty Images)

So far, I am disinclined to vote for Ukip in the forthcoming Euro-elections. Our area has been represented for many years by the great Daniel Hannan, the leading practising Eurosceptic of our times, so I have resisted the Faragiste temptation. But I felt a bit wobbly after reading an interview with Nigel Farage in the Guardian. According to its author, Decca Aitkenhead, Ukip supporters — though not the libertarian Nigel himself — want to make dressing up for the theatre compulsory. They are so right. It is now almost compulsory not to dress up for the theatre, even in the West End. This has had the predictable result that theatre-goers pay less attention, eat and send texts all through the performance. Although ‘audience participation’ has been theatre orthodoxy for 40 years now, the simplest way for an audience to participate in a production is to dress up. By doing so, they recognise they are part of the performance. (For this very reason, audiences at experimental theatres should not dress up.) If they feel no duty of performance, they become just like a cinema audience, indifferent to the live reality of what the actors are doing.

Continentals tend to be more persuasive for the European Union than our home-grown Europhiles, who are rarely honest about what it entails. The only English public figure who ever made the case well was the late Auberon Waugh. He argued the EU was a good thing ‘precisely [because of] the limitations it sets on the influence of British politicians and the British electorate’. He thought it much less harmful if we could all be run by ‘Belgian ticket inspectors’. When we argued in print about this 20 years ago, Bron looked forward to the single currency, because ‘no single government will be able to inflate by printing money to overspend at will. At a stroke, it takes away the greatest power for mischief which our politicians possess.’ I trusted his instinct for who the bossiest people were and how best to frustrate them, so I fretted. But he has been proved wrong about the euro. Far from reining in politicians, it enabled them to borrow without limit because they believed that someone else would stand behind it. That someone else is ultimately Germany who, understandably, wants no repetition. The likely solution, therefore, is rule not by Belgian, but by German ticket inspectors. An altogether more serious matter.

If that’s the kind of trivial thing required to Moore’s vote, we are better off without it, because more people would be antagonised by it! So Moore is better of with Hannan, who speaks a nice story but is completely hobbled by working for Quisling Dave. Well he can s0d 0ff.

Donafugata

Oh but I get dressed up for the cinema, Charles, don’t you?

ButcombeMan

We all should vote UKIP, the stronger the UKIP showing, the greater the strength behind a renegotiation and the greater the effect across Europe in strengthening.those millions for whom Europe is not working.

Auberon Waugh was correct in that the euro has not been printed and inflated.

Yet.

greggf

“He argued the EU was a good thing ‘precisely [because of] the
limitations it sets on the influence of British politicians and the
British electorate’.”

It’s this effect that is at the root of the UKIP polemic, and dividing the Conservative party.

Wa

Denis_Cooper

I doubt there is anything that could ever induce Charles Moore to vote for UKIP, or for that matter vote to leave the EU in a referendum. It’ll always be a case of “there are all these things that are wrong about the EU, but even so we have to stay in it”. It’s what is often called “euroscepticism” but is sometimes more accurately called “pseudoscepticism”, designed to string people along.

HookesLaw

Don’t forget that according to a leading kipper, women should not wear trousers but skirts at all times. Kippers have a lot in common with islamist fanatics where it comes to women.

Mr Grumpy

Yes, their propensity for kidnapping/mutilating/throwing acid at schoolgirls must be mercilessly exposed. Keep up the good work!

cartimandua

Well Mr Moore should be for change. Where he used to live or still does has had a new road imposed on it over the heads of any Democratic body. It will now also have a wind farm imposed on it.
The Chinese behave like this when they bulldoze peoples houses.

Sapporo

I prefer this quote from Auberon Waugh:
“An unemployed electrician,whom I had been taunting with my reminder of how much richer I was, leaned forward and said:’What are your qualifications? I know exactly what your qualifications are.You bent over in the shower to pick up some soap at Eton and Harrow, like all the rest of them.”

The Laughing Cavalier

Though I never had much time for Auberon Waugh I agreed with him at the time that a single currency would stop politicians debauching the currency. Like Mr Moore, I was wrong.

Mr Creosote

UKIP West Midlands Polls Huge 52% Voter Intention

Today’s poll released by Comres shows that a whopping 52%
of people in the West Midlands region (including Herefordshire, Worcestershire,
Warwickshire, Shropshire & Staffordshire) are intending to VOTE UKIP!

you_kid

There is no denying that there is only one way of leading this nation back to prosperity. The number of British bigots is finite.

Wessex Man

Yes, I agree, just google Councillors convicted in the last two years and marvel how the BBC, the entire press of the country and good old boy (suddenly) Murdoch’s empire have managed to miss them all! Including the loony put away for 18 years for carrying out a bombimg Caompaign. You are entirely correct!

Realpolitik/ fruitcake/ racist

Go away, we’ve put up with your establishment for years give us a turn.

the viceroy’s gin

How about the number of your sockpuppets, is that finite as well?

Penny

Didn’t you use this comment last Sunday? Time for a re-think of the repertoire!

pobinr

Edward Heath mis-sold the European Union to us as a ‘Common Market’.
It’s turned into the European Union & is now becoming a Federal Europe.
Under mis-selling rules please can we have our country & democracy back & the money too.
40 years at todays prices about 40 x £11bn net = £440bn.

evad666

I second that demand for the rebate.

Makroon

That lady with the revolutionary button on her cap, sitting next to Hercule Poirot, looks a fearsome old battleaxe.

Our area has been represented for many years by the great Daniel Hannan

This is the same ‘great’ Daniel Hannan who has been pleading party unity and support for a leadership whose Europhilia is increasingly obvious and whose dishonesty (as demonstrated by the risibly dishonest leaflet delivered today.) are plain to see. Hannan is only outdone in being a disappointment by the increasingly ridiculous ‘Wet’ Willy “Eunuch” Hague. Hannan was the Banner bearer for Euroscepticism and he has prostrated himself at the alter of Cameroon deceipt, equivocation and impotence.

Either Hannan is the most cynical of liars or a prize idiot (not uncommon amongst Tory ranks in recent decades). Either way any self respecting Eurosceptic should not be voting for Hannan untol we know his true intentions as they are anything but clear these days.

Then we have the inane babbling about theatre attire and texting during performances (as if the vast majority of the nation, other than the luvvies that is, give a toss about West End Theatre behaviour) before going on to poor old Auberon Waugh’s (a raving Europhiliac in favour of all Brussels worst trappings) purile justification for the Brussels empire.

He argued the EU was a good thing ‘precisely [because of] the
limitations it sets on the influence of British politicians and the
British electorate’.

Now given, before Heath’s great betrayal this country always prided itself on its politicians being better than the run-of the-mill ‘corrupt’ European politician (e.g. Berlusconi refers) has it not occurred to Moore that the recent decades of corruption in domestic politics are in part due to our politicians more readily rubbing shoulders with their ‘corrupt’ European counterparts and worse as they have handed over sovereignty and therefore now have considerably less responsibility and power where once we had politicians who were international statesman we now have politicians who are now no more than domestic pygmies. Has it not occurred to Moore that one of the groups who might ‘grow’ the most in their own and the nations best interests by withdrawal from the EU is our currently unworthy political class?

If this is the best Moore can come up with he might as well have just said ‘I’m not voting UKIP because I’m really a closet deranged urban liberal elitist’………

Holly

I can not stand Hannan!
A jumped up gob for hire….A bit like Farage, or Labour’s Chucky.
Bogus the lot of ‘em.

Colonel Mustard

Daniel Hannan talks the talk but I’ve yet to see him walk the walk. We don’t need reasonable pontification but radical and dynamic rebellion. Far from being ‘frit’ Farage is the only politician with honesty, guts and the determination to break through the mediocrity and cosy consensus blighting politics.

you_kid

UKIP is looking outward in a desperate attempt to find outside influences as a smokescreen for what went wrong in Britain since Thatcher.

Funny how the Scots will be doing exactly the same.
A vote for UKIP in EU elections will lead to independence – the two events this year are tightly linked.

Wessex Man

Blimey double bonus! Vote UKip!

you_kid

You will have it your way, mate.
Don’t come running to me for comfort thereafter.
England is in a vacuum – we have no part in the decision-making of this nation, no referendum here, nothing to do other than to watch others leave. We do not even have a national Parliament (unlike Kosovo).
That’s English democrackery for you.

Wessex Man

I’m warming to you kid, I was one of the aerliest members of the Campaign for an English parliament!

you_kid

That is indeed precisely the case.

WatTylersGhost

Daniel Hannan “eurosceptic” – no, just the Tory’s useful idiot.

Realpolitik/ fruitcake/ racist

I love how anyone, no matter how minor their role in UKIP is seen as the personification of UKIP.

No matter how many times Farage and thousands of supporters and leaders of the party tell you what it stands for you will immediately refer to the drunken idiot’s tweets of five years previously.

Holly

What is their education policy?
Their foreign policy?
What about housing, crime,?
What will they do to rid us of the duff teachers, even duffer coppers, and crap social workers…In fact ALL those useless, lazy, public sector workers who have hid behind the genuinely, brilliant public sector workers?
Maybe Farage could enlighten us unconverted bods.

Realpolitik/ fruitcake/ racist

First, open your mind.

Second, wait for their manifesto.

Holly

Open my mind to what exactly?
I know that Farage’s policy is the ‘IN’ ‘OUT’ referendum, and the money saved will be spent on shipping foreigners out, but what will the dark haired woman’s position be?
Will she be in any future cabinet?
What about the bald bloke with the northern accent…Is he the next foreign minister?
How can I ‘open’ my mind’, even with a manifesto, when I am only spoon fed three UKIP bods, usually on Question Time, which I no longer watch?
If UKIP are to be taken seriously from now until next May, and keep any momentum gained so far, It is the responsibility of Farage as leader to get the publicity for his ‘vision’ of Britain, not down to the public to have to go scouring the internet to find out.
The mood of the public is more in line with UKIP, at the moment, than with any of the other three parties, so IF he elaborated on other aspects of the manifesto, he would romp it into government.
The sad truth is Farage hasn’t, he will miss a trick, and the same old, same old British politicians will implement more of the same old, same old policies……Until….
Farage needs re-electing into the European parliament, or ‘steps down’ with a hefty golden handshake courtesy of the UK/EU taxpayer.

Quite honestly, I get the feeling I am being suckered by the lot of them…Including Farage….UKIP are a completely different entity to him.
Sorry it is so long winded.

Realpolitik/ fruitcake/ racist

You sound as though your mind is already made up, before you even know what UKIP stand for.
Yes, he wants and in out referendum (a form of direct democracy) forigners won’t be “shipped out” what a disgusting thing to say.

Which dark-haired woman? you must be more specific.

Again, “bald bloke” isn’t specific enough. It sounds like you’re referring to a UKIP donor. I recommend indulging yourself with some UKIP interviews on youtube and perhaps a visit to their website. You will get the general idea, but if you want more specific policies as you suggested you will have to wait until their manifesto comes out, as you do for all of the other parties.

I think Farage has gained a lot of publicity for his cause, and a lot of support. the fact you’re asking questions shows you’ve heard about the party and are eager to learn more.

It is difficult to elaborate on a manifesto when you don’t have one, nobody would compile a manifesto this early, there are too many uncertainties. The last thing you’d want to make is a ‘U’ turn before an election.

Rhoda Klapp8

Why, what have the others actually done except talk about such problems? Sure, they may claim to have policies but they balance that with endemic uselessness. They brought about every condition which you imply as a problem.

Holly

That maybe true, but at least we know what the policies are, and the minister who is implementing them.
UKIP consists of Farage, the woman with the dark hair, and the bald bloke, who has a northern accent????
What’s not to like eh??

Realpolitik/ fruitcake/ racist

Right now the unknown is more attractive than the known, as we know, there are known knowns; there are things that we know that
we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know
there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown
unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.

What I know about UKIP I like, it’s true I don’t know all of their policies, but their policy on EU membership is enough to win my vote.

Wessex Man

No no you don’t see above!

Colonel Mustard

Tories:-

Education policy: Gove’s reforms but he hasn’t succeeded in making political activism a criminal offence for teachers
Foreign policy: Risible. Hosing borrowed money overseas for no tangible or measurable benefit. Aiding and abetting dubious insurgents. Wagging a finger at Putin whilst his oligarchs loot London
Housing: Selling it wholesale to foreign investors. Stoking a bubble with Help to Buy. Making it harder to get a mortgage for those who are not rich to begin with.
Crime: CPS totally out of control and police still behaving like the armed wing of New Labour

Wessex Man

Holly

When are Labour, Tory, Lib/dums going to enlighten us about their policies for the 2015 General Election. We are at this moment fighrting the 2014 European Elections. We will be bringing our policies to the great British people AFTER THIS CURRENT ELECTION! Just as the other three parties will or maybe not as is the case with them!

Makroon

Ah, the economic genius Auberon Waugh thought the Euro a good wheeze ….. yawn.
Still, dressing up for theatre seems as good an argument as any other to vote UKIP.

But do the humble northern ‘working classes’, now apparently flocking to the UKIP banner, actually like theatre ?

Bluesman_1

Fred Kite: Ahhh, Russia. All them corn fields and ballet in the evening.

Holly

I dress for ‘dinner’….
Take my PJ’s off (for an hour)….Don’t want to drip food on them.

saffrin

One way to persuade people to vote UKIP is to remind them of the way Brussels dealt with the Lisbon Treaty.
Only one country were given the vote and when they came up with the wrong answer, not only did Brussels loudly announce that referendum would be ignored, Brussels threatened and bribed the little people of Ireland to do it again and do it right.

Holly

True, but it was ‘the little people’ of Ireland who surrendered, and voted as Europe wanted….They could have said, ‘NO’.
My faith in the Irish was indeed rocked to it’s foundations….I trusted them to vote ‘NO’, and never doubted for a second that they would do anything but that….
Shows just how ‘persuasive’ the EU threats….I mean ‘bribes’ are.

The sooner we get out the better….And voting UKIP in the Euro elections will not bring us any closer, any quicker.
It will simply mean that Farage can continue on, with the knowledge that the lifestyle he has become accustomed to is safe for another few years.

Can his party sustain this momentum until next May?
Farage will not be all over the news, as he will be ‘busy’ in Europe.

Denis_Cooper

You were right first time, with the “EU threats”.

Like, legally you don’t have to vote for this new treaty, but if you don’t vote for it on this second time of asking then you’ll be booted out of the EU altogether and cast into outer darkness.

In fact Wolfgang Munchau at the FT wanted to do that after the first referendum.

Holly

Seeing what the ‘YES’ vote got them, and the austerity policies there were a lot harsher than anything Osborne has done here, it may well have been easier for/on the ‘little people’ to have voted ‘NO’.
Being a ‘member’ of the EU club is far too costly for the man in the street, than it is for the likes of Farage & the rest of the MEP’s EU stooges.

I will vote ‘OUT’, at the first opportunity, and nothing anyone says, promises, or threatens, will change my decision.

Rhoda Klapp8

Now, do you think Charles Moore is one of the political class and therefore likely to be of its way of thought, or does he speak for the rest of us?

athelwulf

At least he’s aware of the disconnect between the political class and much of the electorate and as is clear from the above text, and in other articles, is largely an EU sceptic

Colonel Mustard

I’d rather not have a Belgian or German ticket inspector, thanks. Things have changed. In March 1938 Charles Lindbergh was able to note in his diary after proceeding through customs clearance at Southampton:-

“One thing I like about the English is that they treat people as though they are honest. I don’t think they lose anything by that policy in the long run. The officials of so many (European) countries make you feel as though they constantly suspected you of trying to do something you should not.”

Now British officialdom seems to have imported that suspicious, officious, woodenly bureaucratic “Papers please” European approach where everyone is a suspect until they establish their bona fides. Our public “servants” have become hectoring nannies and our public is no longer as well behaved or deferent. Is that a coincidence?

The 3 blogs from Iain Martin shown at the top of the page are, I am guessing, an attempt to diminish UKIP’s appeal as we lead up to the 2014 and 2015 elections – presumably, in order to help David Cameron remain as Prime Minister.

The first, mocking Farage for not standing in Newark. The second, seemingly trying to diminish UKIP’s relevance. And thirdly, apparently enjoying what he thought – and possibly – hoped – 10 months ago – was UKIP’s popularity on the decline.

But look at the date of the first one. It was yesterday. Yesterday, when most decent, patriotic, honourable, politically-aware Britons were digesting the shocking news from Brussels that the EU will be forcing Britain to adopt THEIR Financial Transaction tax – better known as the “Tobin Tax”.

Yet what did we hear from Iain on this most serious matter? In fact, what did we hear from CH and all the other Cameron-supporting commentariat? If they were protesting, I didn’t see it.

But here’s the difference between the Cameron loyalists and those of us who’ve decided to draw a line-in-the-sand.
The EU’s Financial Transaction Tax will be imposed via back-door means. Cameron’s reaction, with this and the many other such thefts of UK Sovereignty, isn’t to tell the EU that Britain isn’t part of economic union and that they should mind their own business. No, instead, he and his Chancellor play the by EU’s rules and give credibility to their diktat by challenging it in the European Courts.

Of course, nothing intended to absorb Britain into economic and political union ever gets overturned in EU Courts. And I would be naïve to think that Cameron and Osborne don’t know this.
But it is worse than this. For not only is Cameron meekly conceding to almost weekly Sovereignty grabs by the EU, but his policy is to actively assist them in their mission to lock Britain into economic and political union ; hurriedly trying to get Britain included in US-EU and Canada-EU trade deals, and opting-in to shared EU Crime and Justice legislation – being the most obvious.

The British people are in trouble. They are in trouble because their politicians and media are not only helping to keep Governments in office who will surrender to EU dictatorship, but they are attempting to kill off the one political entity that is trying to take the fight to Brussels.
.

Bluesman_1

Not only that. check out the Gollum creature’s latest at Breitbart London:

Not a UKIP supporter but the established media attacks on UKIP have become extraordinary. Especially from the BBC. However, the attacks appear to be having the opposite effect to that intended.

Grey Wolf

Not just BBC. Dear ol’ Speccie has unleashed its ‘inner warrior’ against UKIP over the few days.

saffrin

Show me a media outlet of any kind that doesn’t throw dirt at UKIP.
Even Lenny Henry’s racist comment was turned upside down and thrown in UKIP’s face

Realpolitik/ fruitcake/ racist

Lenny Henry’s from the black country in any case, I don’t see what’s wrong with telling him to go back there.

Wessex Man

I never knew they had such courage to have “inner warriors” ah well.

Realpolitik/ fruitcake/ racist

That should be telling you something. When the Euro-fanatics lose a debate on EU membership, overnight the MSM go ballistic with stories of fringe members anecdotes and tweets. It clearly shows who owns the media and that they are not willing to fighting a fair rational argument about our EU membership.

Holly

That’s where the public come in.
Going by the polls, many appear to have an appetite for putting the heeby geebies up a few ‘Westminster bubble’ dwellers….
Long may it continue.

It is NOT anti-UKIP rhetoric, it is pro- the status quo, rhetoric….Once more people suss that, the higher UKIP’s polling should get.

Realpolitik/ fruitcake/ racist

Did you have an epiphany between this comment and the other comment to me? Or are there two Hollys, one more prickly than the other?

Makroon

The media have been denigrating the political class for years.
Congratulations Nigel, you have now made it into the political elite.
Cameron has had far more and far more sustained smearing than any obscure and eccentric Kipper.
UKIP are just the latest paragon for our hateful media to rip into.

the viceroy’s gin

Well, except for the fact that you Camerluvvies are hatefully ripping into UKIP as well, right alongside your media mates, who favor the socialist LibLabCon settled order just as you do.

Holly

Yes, and as long as UKIP were only a threat to the Tories, Labour and the left thought everything for them was going great…..
Fast forward to last week, when it became apparent that UKIP are nicking voters from the left as well, we suddenly get 24/7 UKIP bashing…..
I could be wrong though, and it is all simply a twilight zone coincidence.
Treat the public as if we are ‘stupid’, do not blame us if we ‘act it’, and vote UKIP en masse.

Holly

UKIP smears, having the opposite effect….
Oh dear.
Never mind.

Robert_Eve

Come on Charles – bite the bullet!!

Jez

Another way to get people to vote UKIP would be to screen nationally the Channel Four ‘Job’ they did on that party yesterday evening…. with a politically neutral commentary explaining what was really happening in the piece.

Whatever the UKIP is doing right now it must be very good.

The liberal enforcers are letting the masks slip badly as they crash through smear after smear- this whilst looking utterly repellent to the average voter as they do.

Hexhamgeezer

Enjoying the Smearathon – smell the fear!

Jez

The Liberal media establishment reveled in the fact that Lizzy Vaid would have lewd images of her displayed throughout the public domain, simply because of her political stance- as to be a warning to others.

A few decades ago before the digital age they would in some places parade dissenters from the state orthodox worldview naked through the streets and flog them. This is exactly the same, as an opinion.

Channel 4, et al wheel in some crank, who has nothing to do with anything and scream indignation at his draconian, wrong and utterly minority views on women- yet last week they guffawed at Lizzy Vaid’s completely engineered predicament by them.

Scandalous.

athelwulf

Hmm! I rather like the cheerful Matt Frei on Channel 4 News. But I’m not so sure after the UKIP item on yesterday’s programme. Look him up on Wikipedia and it’s evident he’s part of the ‘bubble’ – educated at Westminster and Oxford